Dissect me and you will see self-esteem is a rarity while paranoia flows abundantly. If I apply the strategy above, I can achieve equilibrium. If I embrace narcissism, I won’t become a douchebag, and if I embrace recklessness, I won’t become self-destructive. If I were already headed straight, then a swerve to the left would steer me right into oncoming traffic, but I drag against the shoulder. Therefore, I need a sharp turn in the opposite direction to return to the road I was made to travel. Even if I were to fall to the opposite extreme–though I doubt my tendency toward caution and fear would ever allow me–it would be better to die explosively in a head-on collision than to be dragged across thousands of mile of dirt. I can believe I’m invincible, because right now I believe I’m completely vulnerable.

My mother told me last night that I act like the welfare clients with whom she dealt when she worked at the county: they allowed the slightest troubles to snowball and crush them, which was why many of them remained dependent upon the government for survival. Ironic how fear, worry, self-consciousness, and every emotion dressed as self-preservation destroy me. If I do not change, I will suffer the same fate; now that is a more productive fear.

What drives you to wake up early in the morning and not merely live life but also kick ass in it? For me, it used to be Katie and the shadows who followed. I’ve since outgrown the infatuations, which has spared my life from those frequent bouts of depression that were one of the main symptoms, but now I have no reason to wake up early in the morning.

What do I really want? What do I dream of? It’s not wealth, it’s not a family, and it’s not even friends; it’s an audience. I want the attention, the affection, and the admiration of people in awe of me. Even the most intimate fantasy involving Katie had her play audience to the real focus of the fantasy: me. It’s not a sin to live to earn the fleeting affection of others. It might be a bit narcissistic, but the most successful people I envy tend to be most jealous douchebags around, so why shouldn’t I indulge in a drop or two? At the very least, I’ll still have the empathy wanting from their lives. Self-denial is overrated as proven by last year when I tried to live the miserable life of a saint.

When I share a poem, a picture, a video, or something creative that somebody enjoys, I no longer feel like a ghost but like a tangible person with an actual identity. That’s why I adore Emilie Autumn and Lady GaGa: They transcended normalcy and allowed who they really are to surface. The casual observer might believe them to be nothing more than women in costumes, but they are at their realest in the makeup, the masks, and the costumes. They have encouraged me to wear my fairy wings without shame. I suffer noticeable speech impediments, and I’m not beautiful, but I have talents with which I can earn your admiration. As I invest the 10,000, success, admiration, and self-fulfillment will become more inevitable. There is no if; there is only when.

“Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus 10,000 times is skill.” –Shinichi Suzuki

“I’m a determined motherfucker and if I try something it will not be put down until I master it! That’s just the way it goes. So, I can confidently, arrogantly say I will never not succeed at something because I just won’t stop until I do. I refuse to fail or not be good at something. That’s not gonna happen.” –Emilie Autumn

I pray you, Sun, pry sewn eyes from sleep with marvelous light!
Break me out of Babel! Are your eternal rays that part seas
impotent to creep through the plastic blinds erected
by family and friends in the name of comfort?
In rare moments when I briefly wake, I find no star
outside to deliver me into dawn, so, I fall into bed again.

Nobody calls, nobody prays; I may be trapped here the rest
of my days. Can’t reach a knob, can’t find a key,
but I discover lock-picks grated onto me:
ten razors to tear through mummified flesh,
unsheathe the frozen heart; ten whips to crack
the glacier shell, hatch the chick out of its hell.
Saturate it with fire to sweat out the tears,
squeeze out each drop of fear to restore buoyancy.
Liberated cells surface through the cracks
to welcome me back to the living world.
Fatigued, atrophied, and disoriented, but alive enough
to step outside and taste the air of life, perhaps see her
again.

She shared a verse from 2nd Timothy barely heard
through the agony of unkempt ruffles of hair,
cakes of crust around bloodshot half-dead eyes,
a pair of pajama pants fashioned with a Scooby Doo shirt,
and a stench of fish that permeates the porch
(doubtful last night’s cologne could eclipse it).

Perhaps a smile could pierce the layers of dust,
persuade her to polish me until I shine once more.
A smile wide enough for dimples, reserved enough
to conceal stray bagel morsels eaten moments before.
I breathed in the visage as long as polite
with the obligatory glance to her protege:
a larger boy with frightened eyes and a nervous smile.
How I envied him! How I dreamt to follow her
across the neighborhood, gluttonously lap
the sight of her hips hugged by the burgundy skirt
plot the steps to strip her out of jacket and blouse,
devour the dollops of coffee ice cream beneath,
discover the epicenter and dig to unearth the elixir.
She would teach me to preach; I would teach her to purr.

She handed me a magazine with a promise to return
in the near future. I slid back into the house
and thanked the Lord for a second chance to see her,
this time showered, primped, and transfigured.

I have been the same way. How long did I wait to begin practice on the violin? Sure, I feared that I would learn techniques incorrectly, and I probably would have, but such errors can be corrected; meanwhile, the time I wasted while in wait of a better method of practice has not produced a better violinist, but only a tardier one. Among my many demons, perfectionism is the most conniving of them all. It pretends to look out for my interest, but all it does is paralyze and procrastinate; I become a sloth with nothing significant to attribute to my name. It’s ironic that my fear of wasting time, whether in haphazard violin practice or in writing mediocre poetry, has resulted in the majority of wasted time I have suffered.

I’m much more active now than I was last year, because I no longer wait for agreeable weather or knowledge of optimal methods; I just dive into the activity, whether it be playing the violin, yoga, cooking, or writing. I no longer delude myself with the belief that the time would be better spent in research of better techniques, because I know I would not use the time to do research; I would simply waste it as I have all these years. It’s very likely that I’m developing some bad habits as I practice the violin, but I also know I’m developing some good ones, because the songs I attempt sound more like songs with each day.

As a Mac programmer once wrote, “Real artists ship.” Likewise, a decent poem written is far greater than an excellent poem imagined. It’s still a chore to force my flesh to do what I want, but I slowly gain the upper hand. As I practice the good habit of practice everyday, it becomes less of a chore. Eventually, it will feel unnatural not to do so each day. It’s like with flossing: There was a time when I anguished over the time and effort it took to floss my teeth each day; nowadays, I floss twice a day. That’s actually a bit of wisdom I read from a violin instructor: Practice until it becomes as habitual and emotionless as brushing your teeth.

I’ve been very productive this week. I dread the day I revert into the sloth, but I’d like to be optimistic enough to believe that such days are gone. However, that nagging voice of the spoiled manchild is as voluminous as ever. Fortunately, I now know the right answers to its cries. It demands that I rest my body and mind; however, I will be just as tired no matter how many hours I waste. It persuades me not to live such a tedious life where I repeat the same actions everyday; however, I have always lived a life of repetitions–and I believe everybody does–but the repetitions I practice now make me better. It threatens that failure is inevitable; perhaps, but if I cease, I will surely die a failure, so my only option is to try. With that in mind, maybe I am not ensnared in an infinite loop, but rather in an upward spiral.

Among these people are those who long for the destruction of the Catholic Church. Maybe the Vatican should burn for its corrupt leaders, but it’s definitely not the only city worthy of destruction: Hollywood and its defenders of child-rapist Roman Polanski deserve to burn in Hell just as much. Is there actually an organization out there that won’t defend its rapist-heroes? Unfortunately, I doubt it. The whole world deserves to be destroyed.

My point? Take the Catholic Church to task for their sins, but don’t be a fucking idiot and pretend that celibacy leads to child molestation. That’s as idiotic as somebody who claims that videogames lead children to violence when there are many non-violent children out there who play violent videogames and many violent children who don’t.

An old friend wades through the crowd
toward my direction. I sheath the phone;
I rehearse the lines prepared to convince
her of transfiguration–to show her how
interesting I’ve become. A smile beckons
her closer, ears anxiously await to the baptism
offered by her voice, but the bitch travels
over me to the long-haired teen who leads
the worship band (and plays the douche
at the Yogurt Mill every Sunday night).
I scurry into my phone once more and
respond to imaginary text messages.

I wait for the night to end before the sermon
begin. The crowd gravitates to the chairs
furthest from me, but a new girl breaks
the taboo and sits beside me. She anoints me
a saint with her oceanic eyes–she offers
me her name–she brings me back to life;
I offer her kindness incarcerated for years.
We exchange social graces that gild the surface
of the treasure chest we just discovered,
then we turn to the pulpit as Pastor Mike prepares
his sermon–as I prepare to listen again
for the first time in three years.